Nitrogen metabolism of the isolated tissues of the rat

Little study has been devoted to the anabolic aspects of nitrogen metabolism in animals. The reason, of course, has been the difficulty of obtaining experimental conditions in which these can be observed, measured, and analyzed. The experiments of Krebs and Henseleit (1) on the formation of urea from ammonia with Warburg’s method of surviving slices of liver suggested that this method might be useful in a direct attack on a number of problems of nitrogen anabolism in animals; i.e., it might be possible to observe reactions in which there is a gain in free energy. It appears that for these reactions the intact cell structure is necessary

Universal efficiency at optimal work with Bayesian statistics

If the work per cycle of a quantum heat engine is averaged over an appropriate prior distribution for an external parameter $a$, the work becomes optimal at Curzon-Ahlborn efficiency. More general priors of the form $\Pi(a) \propto 1/a^{\gamma}$ yield optimal work at an efficiency which stays close to CA value, in particular near equilibrium the efficiency scales as one-half of the Carnot value. This feature is analogous to the one recently observed in literature for certain models of finite-time thermodynamics. Further, the use of Bayes' theorem implies that the work estimated with posterior probabilities also bears close analogy with the classical formula. These findings suggest that the notion of prior information can be used to reveal thermodynamic features in quantum systems, thus pointing to a new connection between thermodynamic behavior and the concept of information.Comment: revtex4, 5 pages, abstract changed and presentation improved; results unchanged. New result with Bayes Theorem adde

Translocal celebrity activism: shark-protection campaigns in mainland China

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Shanghai-born Yao Ming, a retired star player with the American National Basketball Association, is the celebrity face of translocal conservation campaigns to stop the consumption of shark-fin soup in Chinese restaurants worldwide. The standard justification for such communication practices is that they will generate media publicity and save shark populations, by encouraging increasingly affluent Chinese consumers to stop eating a luxury food item based on cruel and unsustainable practices. To date, there has been limited research on the nature of shark-protection campaigns in mainland China, the proclaimed major future market for shark fin. This paper fills that gap. It contends that these campaigns have missed their target, being heavily influenced by communication strategies used in international campaigns and providing incoherent local framing. Declining demand for shark fin demonstrates instead that government austerity measures have had a greater impact on luxury consumption practices, inadvertently highlighting the potential of “authoritarian environmentalism.

Governing buyers of sex in the People's Republic of China

This paper examines the developing body of Chinese prostitution law, and the nature of its implementation, with reference to mainstream media controversy surrounding the case of a male academic penalized as a buyer of commercial sexual services in late 2004. It argues that the protagonist's highly public 'fall from grace' may owe more to the Chinese media's new capacity to act as part of a disciplinary apparatus that extends beyond the purview of the Party-state -via its claim to promote freedom of information -than the presumed repressive ethos of the Chinese Communist Party

Over my dead body! Media constructions of forced prostitution in the People's Republic of China

This paper examines some of the tensions surrounding the PRCs official policy of banning prostitution by focusing on two highly publicized cases of deceptive recruiting for sexual servicesthe `Tang Shengli Incident and the `Liu Yanhua Incident. Both cases involve young rural women who had migrated from their native homes to other more economically developed parts of China to look for work. Both were forced to sell sex and both resisted. However, whereas Tang Shengli jumped from a building rather than be forced into prostitution, Liu Yanhua escaped from conditions akin to sexual servitude by stabbing her `employer. An examination of these cases highlights some of the problems associated with efforts by the Chinese womens media to promote and protect womens rights in a country marked by rapid, yet unequal, economic growth and an expanding, albeit banned, sex industry

Curating philanthropy and socialist governance: the Chinese Charity museum

© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This paper examines the growing political importance of philanthropy in the People’s Republic of China as presented in the Chinese Charity Museum, probably the only national-level museum in the world to feature permanent exhibits focused solely on the subject of philanthropy. The paper explains why charitable practices, which purportedly flourished in pre-communist China, “disappeared” during the Mao era (1949–1976), and why philanthropy is now a government-endorsed activity. It then examines the state-prescribed role of Chinese museology and the creation of a charity museum in Nantong City, before investigating the socio-political narrative that frames the Nantong collection. It concludes that the museum’s “story” simplifies and elides the significant change in forms of philanthropic institutions and practices in contemporary China, relative to their pre-1949 precursors, but yields new insight into how the Chinese Communist Party is recasting philanthropy as an integral part of socialist culture and state-led welfare provision

Public Policy and LGBT People and Activism in Mainland China

This chapter looks at the lack of explicit public policies relating to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and recent events and activist efforts that highlight or challenge that omission. Although the term LGBT does not specify the full range of sexual and gender non-conforming people, it is used in this chapter as a short-hand to represent all sexual and gender minorities, in part because other possible terms such as ‘queer’ also reference western academic theories, and do not have the same significance in China. The term ‘PRC’ is used to refer to post-1949 mainland China. The chapter does not examine the evolution of LGBT-related policies in Hong Kong and Macau, which have different histories of social organization and LGBT activism (Engebretson, Schroeder and Bao 2015; Kam 2013; Kong 2010; Yau 2010)

Celebrity Philanthropy in Mainland China

© 2015 Asian Studies Association of Australia. Celebrity philanthropy in mainland China is a recent phenomenon that has attracted both media publicity and public controversy. Despite its visibility, few data exist regarding how widespread the phenomenon is, and whether it has been growing over time. This paper addresses this gap, using a sample of entertainment and sports celebrities obtained from publicly available sources to answer three key questions. What proportion of celebrities in mainland China engage in philanthropic activities? When did they become involved in philanthropic activities? With what kinds of philanthropic causes and organisations are they connected, and in what capacity? The paper reveals that, in a very short period of time, mainland China’s top celebrities have become just as involved with philanthropic causes as their North American counterparts. The rapid rise of celebrity philanthropy has been correlated with a series of natural disasters and the explicit encouragement of government authorities, offsetting the absence of a tradition of private charitable activities in the People’s Republic of China since its founding